


i'm not gonna die alone (i don't think so)

by cryptidhearted



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: M/M, this is just me looking at entry 66 and going "huh i should make it gayer", y'all want some fucken uhhhhhhh tim introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 10:33:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19105339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidhearted/pseuds/cryptidhearted
Summary: He’s never liked talking about it much, and he gets the feeling Jay can tell with the long gaps of silence between his interviewer’s questions and the way that Jay has settled against him in a way that seems to suggest he wanted to put an arm over him but thought better of it. It’s like watching a baby deer take its first steps out into the great wide world—fumbling, unsteady, awkward, and hoping to God the damn thing manages to make it back to the bush it just made its way out of. Jay doesn’t want to further upset him by prying, but he wants to know, and Tim can almost hear the gears grinding away in his head. Or whatever would be the equivalent for a baby deer who doesn’t know how to walk yet.“Sorry.” Jay offers the word like he expects Tim to bite him.“It’s fine. I know.” Tim replies.





	i'm not gonna die alone (i don't think so)

**Author's Note:**

> jay merrick is Doing His Best
> 
> [find me on tumblr!](https://cryptidhearted.tumblr.com/)

Just being here makes his head hurt.

Tim knows this place well enough, even if the memories aren’t always clear. Stepping foot in the hospital again has always had a sense of—finality isn’t the right word. It wasn’t finality when his mother signed the paperwork and it wasn’t finality when he led Jay here the first time, and it isn’t finality now, and yet the tension in his shoulders and the unsteady way he holds himself is probably indication enough that there’s not good news on the other end of this introduction.

After the tapes of Alex, Tim halfway wonders if Jay’s really comfortable with being led to an abandoned place again. This isn’t an empty forest, at least, and Tim’s not about to tell him a ghost story—not. Not a ghost story. It isn’t a ghost story. Memoirists must have a hell of a time talking about themselves. They’d driven here in silence with Jay still recording the entire thing, and Tim can’t get the blinking red light out of his mind. It’s impossible to separate the two in his head or his line of vision, like Jay just came out of the womb with a recording camera in his hand and if he ever dropped it for a period longer than twenty minutes that’d be the absolute end of him. Jay without a camera is a blind man, Tim guesses, but he’s not one to judge.

A momentary longing for the taste of nicotine on his tongue and smoke in his lungs strikes him as they cross the threshold.

They don’t speak as they walk, but Tim sort of knows that Jay is itching to ask questions. Ever the detective, since Tim hasn’t told him a thing since handing him the camera back and telling him they needed to go back to the hospital, he knows Jay’s probably going over every last possibility and scenario of what they would need to come back here for. He’s expecting answers. Tim doesn’t quite know if that’s what he’s gonna get.

So Tim leads, and Jay vibrates behind him with unasked questions, watching through his camera.

There’s a pause in the doorway of the room where a distant sound of static and a numbness in his hands and feet makes him hesitate to enter, but Tim does anyway with his teeth pressing against his tongue. He approaches the window automatically and pictures the little boy again, hands pressed against the glass and looking out to the forest outside and feeling that—need, that ache, that tug in his chest saying _go in, go in, go in_.

“This is it.” He says, his back to Jay, and the camera’s blinking red light.

“This is… what, exactly?” Jay’s looking around, and Tim can hear the disappointment in his voice. He was expecting something more extravagant, Tim guesses, or something more noteworthy than the place where the fire started in the first place.

“This was my room.” Their eyes meet over the camera for a second before Jay shifts his grip and seems to hide behind it. Tim doesn’t want to look at Jay, or the camera, and so he turns away again, placing his hands in his pockets. The static has gathered itself at the base of his skull, spindly, prickly fingers reaching for his ears. “I used to live here—or, used to be a patient here, but I guess you sort of figured that out already.”

There’s a moment of hesitation from Jay, choosing his words.

“The thought crossed my mind, but I wasn’t sure.”  He’s trying to be cautious. Tim doesn’t blame him.

“Come on.” And Tim chuckles, trying to diffuse the situation; he does nothing but make himself have to clear his throat. “You saw my medical records.” _Put them on the internet. Everybody knows now. Everybody knows how broken Timothy Wright is and now always will._ “Obviously, you know I’ve got some issues. And that I’ve had them for a pretty long time.”

“How long are we talking?” Jay’s turned this explanation into an interview. Does it make it any easier?

The static gets a little louder, and Tim coughs into his hand, exhaling through his nose and turning his back again, moving back and forth just to—keep himself moving. The pathway is familiar enough that he expects to find the grooves in the floor of a little boy’s bare feet if he looks hard enough.

“As long as I can remember.” He replies. “My mom brought me here when I was really young, but she never told me why.”

“You never asked?”

“She was never really around to ask.” Tim’s never blamed her. Hasn’t thought about her in years. Last he heard she got remarried, so he guesses he has a stepdad somewhere. Last Christmas he got a letter with some pictures in it, but didn’t look at them hard enough to remember a face. They’re in his house somewhere, he guesses. It was the first letter he’d gotten from her that had had anything handwritten in it in years. First time he’d heard from her since graduation. “Doctors never really told me what was wrong to my face, either, but I always heard them talking. Delusions. Violent episodes. Things you can’t really tell a little kid. They ran all kinds of tests and pinned just about every disorder you could think of on me at one point or another—they settled on schizophrenia eventually, but I don’t think even they knew for sure.”

A glance towards Jay, and the other’s expression is unreadable. Jay’s standing still, following him with the camera. Tim pictures the lines he’s drawing in his head, wonders at the notes he’s going to make about what he says. He lifts a hand to his mouth and looks away again, making an effort to shield himself—like Jay’s a threat. He’s not, really.

“I was on a lot of medication while I was here.” He can remember the diagnoses and the pills in a little cup and a glass of water and a nurse’s praises every time he swallowed without complaint. How miserable it was to wean off of half of those drugs when they decided for a new one and the combination would make him sick. “I got used to it after a while. It helped, but it wasn’t enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of the problems I was having was—hallucinations. I had a lot of them.” The static gets that little bit louder, like he can’t hear himself over it, but Tim knows better than to raise his voice. No point in making himself look like even more of a lunatic on camera when Jay’s already got a damn good look at a psychopath in a mask. “Part of me knew they weren’t real, but that didn’t make them go away or scare me any less. At one point they got so bad I kept—running away, y’know?” The tension on his shoulders is pulling inwards and making him curl in on himself. His teeth dig into his fingers, slightly. “I’d hide in the maintenance tunnel or run off to Rosswood Park—s’not far from here.”

Tim breathes in. Breathes out. In. Out. Steady yourself. He needs to keep talking or Jay’s gonna find something else to dig into and telling him about this is better than some ominous discussion about serial killers (is it, really?) while leading him into the woods at night because Jay doesn’t seem to have a functioning self-preservation instinct. Or he’s too trusting. Both, probably.

“Whenever they’d find me, I’d tell them I was hiding from whatever I was seeing. They’d bring me back and I’d keep running off so eventually they had no choice but to lock me in, and that’s when it got—worse.” He breathes in again, in and out, steady yourself, _There’s nothing there, Timothy, you’re safe here._ “I wouldn’t sleep. Barely ate. I’d be clawing at the walls and screaming all hours of the night, they had to up my dosage just to calm me down. To the point where I was almost numb.”

And the static noose tightens.

Tim’s exhale shakes, slightly. He remembers lying in bed, tucked in all warm and cozy like the nurse had set out to do before the door locked and remembers being unable to move or think clearly, just watch as that _THING_ stood over him from the corner, as the shadows stretched out in the darkness and his little rocket-ship shaped nightlight wasn’t enough to deter. He remembers being somewhere between awake and asleep and hearing the static and ringing and the whimpering that he’d originally thought came from somewhere else (it wasn’t out of the ordinary, there) before realizing that it was him. He can’t remember if he ever slept or not, but part of him wishes they’d just tied him down instead of drugging him into oblivion and leaving the door locked. At least then he could still _shout._

“These hallucinations.” Jay seems to want to drive the conversation another direction, and Tim doesn’t blame him. “What did they look like?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t—I don’t remember any of them.” He is aware of a presence, in passing. Something standing there, something dangerous and impossible and always, always present. Something that he should not be looking at and should not be trying to understand, and something that didn’t care very much about what being near to it was doing to a young boy. “Probably because of the medication. It didn’t cure me, but it leveled me out enough that they let me go eventually. I got to go to college. Met Brian there, the first real friend I remember having—” A pang in his chest, in his heart, and Tim bites down a little too harshly on his fingers.

“You met Alex there too, right?” Jay offers. Trying to turn it back to his investigation. Again, Tim can’t really blame him. He _did_ come here for answers, after all.

“Yeah.” Tim breathes out through his nose, stands still with his back to Jay and his body turned towards the doorway. “When I saw that footage you got from him, and that… person, in the background, or whatever, I couldn’t help but think—” He feels tongue tied. The static noose around his throat keeps tightening and he can feel—claws sinking into the back of his head, noise drowning out his thoughts and clutching tighter and tighter to him as he struggles to breathe properly. “I couldn’t help but think, what if that’s what I was seeing? When I was here, what if that wasn’t a hallucination at all?”

“Wait—” There’s a hesitation in Jay’s tone, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” and Tim feels his skin crawl, feels his stomach turn, feels the tension around his chest tighten and tighten and tighten. “What if this is my fault? Alex could be a normal person. You could be living a normal life, so could Jessica, so could everyone else—if it wasn’t— _for me_!” He catches himself shouting and stops, flinches, steps out into the hallway. “I have no way of knowing that for sure. That’s always going to be in the back of my mind. How am I supposed to handle that?” Paces. Back and forth. Movement. The desire to bolt mixes with the craving for smoke.

Jay seems taken aback, to say the least. Tim doesn’t bother to look at him, but he can hear the way Jay shifts his weight from foot to foot by the debris on the ground, but it feels like his head is filling in the gaps in sound with the way the static won’t stop flickering and crackling in his ears.

“I don’t think shifting the blame is a good idea, Tim,” Jay starts,  but Tim doesn’t let him talk.

“I’ve blamed everybody but me and I could be the one who started this, Jay!”

Both of them are out of the room now, Jay standing in the doorway and hiding behind his camera like a shield as Tim paces. He struggles to breathe clearly, not looking towards the camera or the man behind it, sharply aware of the camera’s light blink blink blinking at him and reminding him that Jay’s not going to be hiding anything he says.

“I think you need to calm down,” Jay tries. “The stress is just—making you paranoid—”

Something snaps.

“But what if I’m right!?” Tim _snarls_ at him, bares his teeth and _snarls_ like an animal and the static gets louder, the crackling in his ears drowning out the wind and the debris under his feet and the settling of the building, the sound of Jay’s voice—if he said anything else, Tim doesn’t catch it, and he can’t _see_ properly in the moment, like his vision has darkened around the edges. Like shutters closing against the sunlight. Someone pulled the curtain.

He sniffs, feels his eyes burn. This fucking place has always made him feel like a child again.

Tim steps back, presses his spine against the wall, and slides down against the peeling paint until he’s sat on the floor. He curls his knees up against his chest and puts his hands in his face, breathing heavy in shaky, trembling inhales and exhales as his whole body shakes, as he grits his teeth and—fights the urge. The desire to bolt, to the woods, _go in, go in, go in,_ all gnashing teeth and grasping hands and blood on his tongue.

“What if what happened to me is happening to Alex right now, Jay?” He doesn’t—hear himself talk, exactly. He sounds far away and distant, and Jay speaking up isn’t any different. Tim hears him talk but doesn’t pick out the words, like somebody put a hand over his mouth or fabric between his teeth or the static on the television is just drowning out the picture. It takes his head a second to catch up and process—

“I don’t know. But I do know you’re not like him, Tim. Not entirely, anyway.”

Is that supposed to be comforting?

“He’s not running around in the woods at night in a mask.”

“No, but you’re not pointing a gun at me right now, either.”

So Jay has figured things out, at least a little bit. Tim laughs, but it’s not genuine, some half-hearted chuckle said into his hands as he hears Jay keep shifting, moving, and he wonders if the other is just as prepared to bolt as he is. He folds his arms over his knees and makes to hide his face in them, shutting his eyes and trying to claw his way past the static. Calm down. Catch your breath. He swipes his tongue across his teeth, expecting to find them sharp.

“That’s it.” Tim mutters. “No more secrets.”

His throat still feels hoarse from the shouting—he knows he aggravated it further, by turning it on Jay, but he’s not willing in the moment to lift his head and look the other man in the eye. He should, of course, as he needs to be able to gauge the reaction and decide which way to go based on that, but it feels somehow safer for him to keep hiding. This is better—this is better, because the alternative is looking at the camera and looking towards Jay through it, and Tim knows very well that he is still being recorded.

It makes his skin crawl, but he can’t blame Jay for wanting to know what’s happening to him.

He sees the little red light still flickering when he shuts his eyes and it fills in the gaps for him. Judgement, scorn, disgust, blame, lay them all at his feet by the shape of that blinking red light burned into his eyes as inherently tied to Jay and Jay’s eyes and Jay’s voice and Jay’s stupid bad habits.

The little red light blinks and blinks and blinks, and Tim keeps himself hidden in the darkness of the fabric of his shirtsleeves as he hears Jay’s shoes grinding against the dusty concrete floor when he kneels to steady himself and set the camera down. He knows this process, even if it’s not what he was expecting, and he counts the sounds. First, the sound of Jay’s shoes on the dirty floor. Second, the camera being set down very gently, like it’s something fragile, and Tim wonders if he’s faced it towards him or away from him. Third, the first repeats and Jay stands up, brushing himself off. Fourth, Jay’s footsteps, closer rather than the further that Tim was expecting, and he tilts his head to allow himself to watch through one eye as Jay does the mystifying over the logical (as he always seems to do) and sits himself right down beside Tim, close enough that their arms brush.

“That is… a lot.” Jay says, and Tim snorts in reply, but does not say anything.

“But I really don’t think it’s helpful to think like that.” He adds, and the pause that follows tells Tim that he’s expected to say something at this point. He hasn’t moved from his position with his face half-nestled against his arms, knees pulled up to his chest. Jay has folded himself into a cross-legged position, his hands in his lap, fingers curled like he’s still holding his camera. Tim doesn’t speak, yet.

He feels drained. Like the tension that had been on his shoulders had simply moved downwards to tie itself into knots in his stomach. Since the night of the tunnel and the appearance of that Thing at the end of it, he hasn’t been sleeping right again. His meds are supposed to help, but all they do is suppress his symptoms and keep away the static. Sleep is a side-effect. Not a guarantee. A cursory examination would suggest to him that Jay hasn’t, either, but with the perpetual bags under Jay’s eyes Tim can only guess at how much sleep his friend (are they friends?) really gets a night. The conversation still hangs in the air too, his confession lingering among the vacant rooms caked with peeled paint and ash and the wear of too many unwanted footsteps.

The red light blinks in the corner of his vision. Jay set the camera against the doorway. It’s still pointed at them.

Is he gonna post this one, too?

“Do you…” Jay begins, and he shifts his weight to lean back against the wall. His eyes haven’t looked away from Tim’s. “Do you really think it’s your fault, Tim? Like this is all you?”

And—

Tim snorts.

“No, Jay.” The sarcasm is easy, now, even if his restless stomach continues to twist itself up in knots and he can feel the familiar sensation in his chest telling him it’s impossible to breathe and he _really_ should just stop trying already. “I only told you that because I couldn’t think of a real reason to get you out to this spooky abandoned mental hospital in the middle of a Friday afternoon.” His eyes burn as he finally, finally lifts his head and tilts it back instead of forward, feeling his scalp against the burned-off paint.

He’s never liked talking about it much, and he gets the feeling Jay can tell with the long gaps of silence between his interviewer’s questions and the way that Jay has settled against him in a way that seems to suggest he wanted to put an arm over him but thought better of it. It’s like watching a baby deer take its first steps out into the great wide world—fumbling, unsteady, awkward, and hoping to God the damn thing manages to make it back to the bush it just made its way out of. Jay doesn’t want to further upset him by prying, but he wants to _know_ , and Tim can almost hear the gears grinding away in his head. Or whatever would be the equivalent for a baby deer who doesn’t know how to walk yet.

“Sorry.” Jay offers the word like he expects Tim to bite him.

“It’s fine. I know.” Tim replies.

They do nothing but sit there for a second, and Tim can already picture the entry in his head. (What number is he on, again?) _Entry #66, title card midway through: Tim and I sit in silence for a half an hour after his dramatic revelation before either of us knows how to finish the conversation, because Tim is impossible to get to open up and all the questions I could think of were completely unrelated. Also I am a bad liar. A terrible liar. Like, the worst liar anybody has ever met. Hotel documentaries._

Instead, Jay puts his wrist against his mouth and coughs into his sleeve, sighs, and then nudges Tim slightly.

“I really don’t think you’re at fault.” He says. Tim says nothing. Jay soldiers on, “How could you be? It wouldn’t exactly make sense, right? This… thing, whatever it is that Alex is seeing and that we keep running into, it’s not like you’re the one calling it. You’re not leading it to us.”

“Jay, I don’t—”

“And even if you were, I can tell you wouldn’t be doing it on purpose, so what are you supposed to do? I saw your medical records,” and there’s a wince, Jay being almost a little more self-aware than usual, “and from what I can tell this started when you were a kid, Tim. Kids can’t do anything about something like that. You had it chased off and it just came back because it knows you, that’s all. We keep going to places it’s been, so clearly it’s just—”

“Can you not talk about it like that?” Tim responds, and Jay stops talking with a series of noises that Tim automatically registers as his train of thought grinding to a halt.

“Sorry.” Jay repeats, in the same way, and this time Tim doesn’t bother to acknowledge the apology.

Tim doesn’t like to talk about his childhood because there’s nothing there to talk about. To anyone who asked, he’d give the same spiel: Dad never existed, Mom didn’t care enough to be involved in his life, he grew up and went to college and got a job and moved on. A couple people got a little bit more: Brian, for example. Tim can still remember the night at Brian’s house where the two of them had gotten a little bit drunk and _something_ had set him off (what, he couldn’t remember) and Brian had finally gotten to find out a little bit more about how fucked in the head Timothy Wright just happened to be. There had never been any reason for him to add on _oh and hey, by the way, I basically grew up blitzed out of my skull in a mental hospital because I see some freaky monster and I guess it does bad things to the people around me. I think that might be my fault, sorry._ Brian had never gotten to know that. Nobody did, besides his doctor. And now everyone in Jay’s YouTube audience too, he supposes. Tim considered it a small miracle that Brian hadn’t run away screaming and had responded with (if not understanding, at least an attempt at) sympathy and that their relationship hadn’t come to an abrupt end.

Jay is fidgeting, picking at his fingers, and Tim guesses it might be because this is one of the few times he’s seen him without the camera being actually in his hand. (The first time was, of course, when Tim punched him in the face, twice, but they do seem to have moved right past that.) His dark eyes drift towards the blinking red light again, directly at the camera lens, and then shift back to looking at Jay. Can the screen see their faces from this angle?

He hopes not, when he feels Jay leaning on him slightly as he shifts his positioning. It’s a movement that Tim knows is born solely out of the fact it’s impossible to get comfortable on a debris-covered concrete floor, but Jay _lingers_ in a way that’s almost curious. Is he trying to keep him comforted? Trying to offer some kind of support? Tim’s attention drifts from the camera to the other man beside him, and his fingers itch for a cigarette.

“Thanks for… telling me.” Jay says, still choosing his words oh-so-carefully, and Tim halfway wishes he’d just step on the eggshells instead of worrying so much. It’s hard enough to admit it without being able to tell exactly what his friend (really, are they friends?) is thinking about. “I still don’t think it’s all your fault.”

Tim doesn’t speak. Jay keeps filling the silence.

“There’s just… no way. Being a sick kid doesn’t mean being followed by monsters. It’s not you.” Jay makes eye contact with him while he talks, with that sheepish expression in his face still like he’s pretty sure he’s saying the right thing but hasn’t decided what the right thing is yet, exactly. Tim doesn’t look away from him, though he does allow himself to uncurl slightly, stretching his legs out before him instead of keeping them curled into his chest.

“Thanks.” Tim mutters, because it’s all he can think to say that won’t escalate. He doesn’t want to argue with Jay. He doesn’t want another fight on camera to remind him of how loud the static gets when he’s angry and doesn’t want to have to drill it into Jay’s head that the more time he spends around him, the worse things are gonna get.

Selfish, maybe, but it’s been a while since Tim’s been comfortable around somebody else.

And the quiet continues, because he guesses Jay has said what he wanted to say, and Tim still doesn’t know how to carry a fucking conversation, and the way Jay leans on him instead of pulling away and standing up has him guessing that he should be feeling better right about now anyways.

He does, sort of.

“We should get going.” Jay’s voice breaks the silence after enough time, and Tim automatically glances to the red light of the camera to make sure it isn’t just because the battery died and Jay’s feeling antsy because he can’t record himself.

“I think we should look around a little more.” Tim replies, when the red light keeps blink blink blinking at him. He feels Jay lean away from him and misses the pressure immediately.

“Are you sure about that?” Jay sounds almost sheepish and Tim sighs through his nose as he tilts his head back once again.

“I feel like we’re missing something.” He elaborates, “And I don’t want to have to come back here again to keep looking if we are.”

Jay hesitates.

“Okay.” He says. “Okay.” Tim’s eyes follow him as Jay stands up, and his companion moves to pick up the camera in the doorway. The red light keeps blink blink blinking, and this is what Tim’s used to, the camera-as-barrier, camera-as-mirror, camera-as-Jay as the other man adjusts his grip until he’s comfortable and has the right angle. “What kind of thing should we be looking for?”

“You saw my files. There might be something else like that lying around.”

“Do you know where that could be?”

A moment’s pause, before Tim answers, “Yeah. There should be a filing room somewhere.”

“Then let’s go find it.” Jay extends a hand to help Tim up, and Tim doesn’t hesitate much in taking it as he stands. There’s a ringing in his ears, a sensation of static in the back of his mind, but he ignores it the best he can, gesturing for Jay to follow him.

It isn’t… hard, exactly, for him to remember the layout of the building before it had burned. Here is the rooms where he had the comfort of knowing he wasn’t the only little boy having nightmares. Here is where the overnight nurse slept and tolerated when the children knocked on her door to tell her they needed something. Here is where the cleaning ladies kept their supplies. Here is where the doctor had their conversations. The doorway to the courtyard where they were allowed to play on the regular, when meds had been figured out and therapy requirements were fulfilled and making friends was a safe thing to do. Playroom for those who weren’t allowed outside. Tim rebuilds the building in the back of his head and places himself (small, trembling, clutching a fall-risk bracelet with wide eyes) inside it again, following the bare footsteps.

Jay, just behind him with the camera peeking over his shoulder, is anchor enough.

They walk together past rooms and hallways and Tim keeps wanting to reach for his cigarettes and lighter, a frustration that won’t go away that he guesses is the replacement for the fact he can’t just bolt off to the woods and let Jay figure out how to get back on his own. Indulging that is a bad idea, anyway, he reminds himself—running around in the woods in the dark in a mask, apparently, isn’t the best replacement for therapy.

“Is this it?” Jay pipes up to break Tim from his reverie, and Tim glances towards the desk, pictures a red-haired young nurse who he remembers slipping him a hard candy now and again, pictures signed papers and medication changing hands.

“Yeah. Should be here.” He steps past the desk, taking the flashlight Jay offers him in order to examine the shelves in the darkness. Dust. Peeling paint. The desire to cough gathers in the back of his throat. He remembers peeking in before and seeing—pages upon pages upon pages, all scrawled handwriting and prescriptions, being little and wondering just how they ever managed to keep everything in order because the idea of a regular old filing system was beyond him. And of course: “There’s nothing here.”

“Anything in the extra room back there--?” Jay begins, but as soon as he finishes his sentence the both of them jolt at the sound of glass breaking and footsteps through the messes on the floor that don’t belong to either of them. Jay unceremoniously shoves himself up against Tim’s back, squeezing him into the small room with a quick demand of “Turn off the flashlight!” whispered against his ear. Tim obliges him, but doesn’t let himself be pressed up against the wall, instead nudging Jay away from him as gently as he can to peek out the doorway himself.

Just as soon as he does, he catches sight of a man walking past; yellow hoodie, visible indication of a black mask, gloved hands curled into fists. Something sparks in the back of Tim’s mind, something that makes his head ache and makes him press his tongue against his teeth. _Follow me_. Like a yank of a collar around his throat, and Tim presses himself against the wall and slinks nearer.

“We should stay here.” Jay says, and Tim feels him reaching for him, but he steps out of his reach before Jay can grab him. “Tim, c’mon, we should stay here.”

“Hiding isn’t going to get us anywhere.” Tim replies, his voice low as he hears the hooded man’s footsteps growing quieter. _Follow me. Follow me._ He hears Jay mutter a curse behind him as he makes his way out of the closet and towards the hallways properly. Whether or not Jay follows doesn’t even occur to him, in the moment, but by the time he’s caught sight of the hooded man again and can determine which way he’s going, he’s not surprised to hear Jay trying his best to keep quiet behind him.

The hooded man’s walk isn’t what Tim would consider purposeful, exactly, but neither is it lazy. His pace is quick in a way that suggests he’s got somewhere to be, and he’s halfway certain that if he and Jay had waited any longer they would’ve simply missed him walking past them.

Trailing in his footsteps is easy.

Surprisingly easy.

Tim steps with purpose, on instinct, the noise of Jay behind him drowned out again by the soft buzzing and ringing in his ears. Anger pulses in his chest, hot and heavy. Agitation spikes up and down his spine. He feels his jaw tighten, feels his teeth grind against eachother and feels his hands curl into fists as he follows. Something almost like a growl threatens to well up in his chest and when he catches a glimpse of the wrench in the room up ahead Tim doesn’t waste any time in grabbing it.

Lunge. Coiled to pounce. Sink teeth into fabric into flesh into bone. Taste blood on his tongue and hear a stranger shout and yell and then hear the sickening crunch of metal against a skull—no, no, that’s—that’s not—

“What’s that for?” Jay’s whisper cuts through the noise and Tim blinks a few times, feels his grasp on the wrench tighten. His knuckles are white and his free hand is shaking.

“Just in case.” Tim answers through his teeth. _Follow me,_ like a noose, like a collar, like a leash being pulled in two directions.

Stalking is natural. Following is natural. His vision seems to shrink until what he can focus on is the hooded man in front of him and the static in his head, steel wool rubbing on the insides of his skull and scraping away anything that might resemble a lasting thought.

The next bit—

Comes in pieces.

Pieces.

Jay taps him on the shoulder with all the ceremony of a kid scared he’s about to get in trouble as the hooded man steps into another room off the hallway, and the gesture is simple enough to follow; Tim places himself between Jay and the doorway either for intention of being protective or simply because he doesn’t want Jay to interrupt his line of vision. They both press against the wall and Tim fixates on the sliver of sunlight from the broken wall of windows that makes up the way outside, waiting for the moment the shadow passes. He adjusts his grip on the wrench and bares his teeth, feels canines and molars almost seem to sharpen—

Jay hears something, but Tim does not, the noise and static drowning out everything else, _follow me follow me follow me follow me_ —

The shadow passes.

Tim bolts.

He thinks the hooded man heard him, or else always knew he was there, because he bolts, too, running into the forest with a stance that is nowhere near the prey animal that Tim was prepared for him to be. Copper on his tongue and a thumb clad in rough fabric on his chin, _follow me_ , something hefty and heavy in his grasp and _that way, go that way,_ a strong grasp telling him to _sit still and rest_ until he was aching for the chance to chase, to follow, _to grasp and grab and lunge,_ until he coughed and coughed and coughed and—

The two of them plunge into the forest and Tim can halfway hear Jay behind him, trying to keep up when he’s not an experienced runner and doesn’t have the benefit of the predatory instinct being the only thing rattling around in the mess of his cracked skull.

It passes in pieces.

He feels like he’s done this before.

The hooded man knows the pathway better than he does, though, because Tim sees him move between and around (and through?) the trees like he’s tracing a path he’s tread time and time again and doesn’t have to look to be sure of what he’s doing.

It passes in pieces, and he feels like he’s done this before.

It ends because he blinks—or took a wrong turn—or bumps into a tree in the wrong way—or because there was nothing there to begin with—because the forest ends and a field begins and the hooded man is gone and Tim is snarling, growling, shaking as he grasps the wrench, as he pants for breath, as his eyes are blown wide and his lungs burn. He comes to a stop and paces like something barely contained, back and forth, back and forth, like he expects claws to be digging into the dirt.

“So what now?”

Jay’s voice comes from behind him, and Tim doesn’t know how long it’s been, but the sun is lower in the sky than he remembers it being—

“We were this close!” He snaps, and he doesn’t hear his own voice past all the noise. “This fucking close—how could he disappear like that?”

“He probably—hid in the woods. We ran right by him.” The other’s tone is cautious and wary, as if he is aware of the waves of anger rolling off of Tim, the drool gathering in his mouth and the growing frustration at being unable to tackle _something_ to the fucking ground already—

Tim wouldn’t blame him for the repulsion.

“He got ahead of us.” He hisses through clenched teeth. “He’s—on the other side of the field or something—” And then he is throwing the wrench with a sharp yell, a snarl and a curse. “We were this close!”

“Tim,” Jay says, stepping closer, and Tim _almost_ whirls around to strike him instead to satisfy the urge that _won’t go away,_ “He could be anywhere. Look around.”

“What are we supposed to do? Go back home and just—forget about it?”

“I mean, I found this.” And Jay is offering something to him as Tim tilts his head to look back at him, his eyes fixating on—black plastic. A tape. It looks a little scuffed and dirty, and in passing Tim realizes that that must’ve been what had kept Jay from keeping the pace with them. He’d stopped to look at something in the room that the hooded man had been in. Evidently, it had been somewhat fruitful.

Still, the agitation in Tim’s body doesn’t disperse. He begins to pace, digging his boots into the dirt and breathing heavy.

“That makes me feel better.” Sarcasm drips from his tone like drool from his jowls. “That makes me feel a whole lot better. I’ll just wait for him to show back up at my house.” He turns on his heel, looks Jay in the eye for a moment. His mouth opens to say something, but instead he simply scoffs, bares his teeth and makes to move past him.

Jay reaches, in that instant, to grab his wrist.

Tim jumps—but the static and noise abruptly vanishes from his head, and he grimaces against it, blinking to clear the last of the shadows from his vision as he looks down to the wrist Jay grabbed and then up to the other man’s face. The camera and tape are unceremoniously held in one hand, the scuffed tape pinched between Jay’s fingers and the camera pointed directly at the ground instead of Tim. He fills in the red light anyway, blink blink blinking away and it’s not any easier to look Jay in the face now than it was earlier.

“We should go back home, Tim.” Jay offers, caution in his voice and a softness in his tone that he doesn’t know how to identify properly as anything at all, and Tim breathes out slowly through pursed lips.

“Yeah.” He replies, the exhale unravelling the tension that had gathered and replacing it instead with the uncomfortable urge to vomit. “Let’s. Let’s go.”

He pulls himself free from Jay’s grasp, gently, and turns towards the forest. _Go in, go in, go in._

Tim follows the footsteps and feels the leash tug in the opposite direction.

Jay doesn’t say another word, but Tim leans into his presence anyways. Lead instead of follow. He wants to lean into that presence just behind him instead as they make their way through the trees and underbrush, and he shuts his eyes, walking and knowing the right places to put his feet without needing to see the places where the roots disrupt the poorly traversed pathway. He wants to press himself against Jay’s side and anchor again, settle himself back into his bones and catch his breath and remind himself that the reasonable reaction to someone disappearing isn’t to turn the anger on whoever’s left over. He wants to offer a guest room or his couch to Jay instead of returning to the shitty motel he’s staying at, but at the same time after that display he doubts Jay would appreciate having to spend too much time near to him.

Is he still recording?

Without bothering to open his eyes and look behind him, Tim simply pictures himself on the screen, his back to Jay and his breathing unsteady, his shoulders shaking with every inhale and exhale.

He fills in the little red light for himself, blink blink blinking away.


End file.
